An enabling environment for corruption?
Everywhere we go, we are confronted with conversations and references to how our country has degenerated to abject levels of corruption in both government and nongovernment institutions.
Among nongovernment institutions, when such practices are immediately noticed by higher management, those found to have embezzled some money or to have been mulcting money from the organization are fired almost immediately. Some exceptions are true among nongovernment institutions or organizations. If an organization is run by one family, corruption creeps in in the decision to include almost all mature members of the family as officers of the organization. This prevents a system of checks and balances of power and discretion since the children of the chairperson who runs the organization are not able to challenge their parents’ decisions or acts of indiscretion.
In general, many Filipinos act in ways that are thought to be “normal” and expected when we interact with others, especially with those who have the power to disregard our requests or transactions in government offices. These are relatively “small” and quite “harmless” acts, as many of us tend to think. We never think of these as corrupt acts—it is the way things are conducted in many government offices, so we go along with these, not knowing that we contribute to normalizing corruption.
Are we then any less corrupt than those who have blatantly stolen huge amounts of money from infrastructure projects?
Some would rationalize that our small acts of bribery, or what many of us call “padulas” (grease money), are nowhere near comparable to the blatant acts of thievery by sitting government officials and their equally greedy contractor partners. This makes us feel that we have the moral high ground to criticize those in power who have been discovered to be partners in crime with business contractors.
Many of us are quite impatient to line up when applying for a driver’s license or for the renewal of registration of our vehicles. We tend to look for ways to avoid the long lines, and look for people whom we know, even quite faintly, to ask for some favors to get ahead of the line. Then, we are also told that there are people who work in concerned offices (the Land Transportation Office), who advise us on how to skip the long line. This involves some money exchanged between government functionaries and their “suki” fixers. Then they will tell the applicants to expect that such an amount of money will not be reflected in the official receipts provided to them, since these will be shared by both the concerned government functionaries and the fixer. Many of us think that this is how business is transacted in some offices, so we tend to follow. We choose whatever is convenient for us, and after all, it is just a small amount of money we spend in exchange for hours of waiting in long queues.
Then there are drivers who get cited for both minor and major traffic violations. They will talk it out with the highway patrol group member who cited them, and present various reasons for their indiscretion in violating a traffic rule, and accompany it with the subtle act of placing a P500-bill in the hands of the traffic enforcer. The traffic enforcer looks around for his colleagues to see if they are watching and pockets the money like nothing happened. Needless to say, this exchange of money is not supported by an official receipt. For the driver who is in a hurry to get to his destination, the amount of money he shares with the traffic enforcer to make the latter look the other way is just a small amount compared to what he will lose when he is not able to reach his destination in time.
When it was time to renew the registration of our old family vehicle, I was told that it would be better to let a “fixer” handle it so I wouldn’t have to be bothered waiting in line, considering my age and limited mobility issues. But as we have done in the past, I insisted on following the usual process, without skipping lines. As it happened before this year’s renewal process, it took my husband and me three and a half days for the whole range of processes to comply with all requirements for vehicle registration renewal.
This is why many people choose the line of least resistance, skip long waiting lines, and pay some padulas along the way. This, for me, is the beginning of accepting corruption as normal, except that when the amounts entail billions of pesos, we are enraged and shout, “ikulong ang mandarambong!” (jail the corrupt!–referring to greedy government officials and their contractor partners).
Perhaps we should start realizing that giving “small” amounts of grease money to authorities is an act of corruption. Normalizing these acts provides an enabling environment for huge acts of corruption to thrive.
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